Principia Cybernetica: An introduction

Human beings have always asked questions about the meaning of life. Where do
we come from? What is knowledge? What is truth? What are good and evil?

Every time has its own approach to these eternal philosophical questions,
deriving from its knowledge and technology. We hold that in our time, the age
of information, it is systems science and cybernetics, as
the general sciences of organization and communication, that can provide the
basis for contemporary philosophy. Therefore, this philosophical system is
derived from, and further develops, the basic principles of cybernetics.

The people who started the Principia Cybernetica Project believe that it must
be possible to form a philosophical world-view that answers some of the
questions above, and that is entirely built upon notions of cybernetics and
systems theory. Since there are some very strong foundations to this
approach, the PCP system is not just another amalgamation of fragments from
different sciences. It is a true integration of existing knowledge. These
days, there's a great need for this kind of integration, because
knowledge is being fragmented and we don't have an overview of what's going on
in different fields of science:

... a failure to generate any firm foundations on which theory can be
constructed. We believe that it is this latter condition that Cybernetics
and Systems Science has indeed found itself in today. Even a cursory
examination of current systems literature will reveal a veritable zoo of
advanced, highly sophisticated theories which have only a loose and
metaphorical relation to each other. A clear and elegant underlying theory on
which they could be reconciled is simply lacking.

So the main goal of the PCP project seems to be creating an interdisiplinary
overview of cybernetics and systems science. And at the same time, it tries
to build a new philosophy, a new world-view, entirely built upon cybernetic
theory.
How do the PCP-people achieve this goal? They play a little game of meta-
thinking: the principles of cybernetics are being applied to themselves!

As cybernetic theory informs our philosophy, so cybernetic
technology lets us do things that philosophers of other times could
only dream of. Using computer technology, we develop a large philosophical
text from many nodes which are linked together with different relationships.
Readers can navigate among the many concepts, guided by their individual
understanding and interests. Disparate material can be integrated together
while being written and read by collaborators from all around the world,
undergoing variation and selection. Thus we apply theories about the
evolution of cybernetic systems to the practical development of this very
system of philosophy.

In other words, the PCP Web is still growing, thereby simulating a giant
cybernetic organism, and it will probably never reach a final steady state.
You can find the PCP web at
http://cleamc11.vub.ac.be/Default.html .
The text you are now reading is only a small introduction to PCP,
including some parts of an electronic interview I had with Valentin Turchin
and Cliff Joslyn, two devoted founders of the project.

Joslyn:

We have multiple goals at different levels, and they interact in a rather
complex way. Our primary goal is to construct a coherent, whole philosophy
from the perspective of cybernetics and systems theory (see
cybsysth.html);
and we want to do that by moving towards consensus-building over a long
period of time collaboratively among the editors, our community of colleagues,
and the wider community as well.

Another goal is to have the content and the form of that philosophy affect
each other. Reflecting Whitehead and Russel's Principia Mathematica, which
attempted to develop mathematical principles in terms of themselves,
Principia Cybernetica attempts to develop cybernetic principles using
cybernetic principles themselves. In this context, it means cybernetic
technology. Thus we try to use computer and web-based technologies to
implement a knowledge-structure both about and using
the concepts of freedom, constraint, control, evolution, and meta-system
transitions.

In order to elaborate on the principles of the Principia Cybernetica Project
and its fundamental philosophy, a few things have to be clarified.
For instance, the notion of "meta" should be explained. It's a word that
everyone in computer science uses every now and again, but we have to be very
specific here. How would you explain the term "meta" to a layman?

Joslyn:

"Meta" in Greek meant "after", but in modern usage has come to mean
"self-application". This is "of"-ness in English: meta-history is
history-of-history; meta-language is a language-of-language: a language in
which you discuss another language; meta-analysis is a study of other
studies; etc. In cybernetics, a meta-system is a system-of-systems, or a
system whose parts are in turn other systems.

The correct use of the term can be very important. For example, in the PCP
Web (
sup-meta.html), we describe meta-beings strictly as
organisms-of-organisms. We are, in fact, meta-beings, since each cell in
our body is in fact another organism. Meta-beings are distinguished from
super-beings like societies, which are collections of organisms, but not
organisms in their own right. The society-as-organism metaphor is very
strong in social thought, but fails in some important conditions, and we
feel that this lack of distinction can cause serious problems in
understanding and analysis.

Turchin:

Informally, "meta" is something which includes control of one entity over
other entities (typically, many other entities). A metasystem
transition is creation of such a system from individual "lower level"
entities. Formation of multicellar organisms from individual cells is an
example. The term "control" is understood in a very wide sense, including
investigation, modification, reproduction. Control is not necessarily
compulsion, by no means! If somebody takes your hand and shows a way
out of a maze, this is one of the forms of control.

Secondly, it would be a good idea to give a short introduction to the
field of cybernetics, so that we all know what we're talking about.
Cybsysth.html would be a good place to get this introduction.
We can compare cybernetics to mathematics in the following way:

Both mathematics and cybernetics are in the first place metadisciplines: they
do not describe concrete objects or specific parts of the world; they
describe abstract structures and processes that can be used to understand and
model the world. In other words they consist of models about how to build and
use models: metamodels (Van Gigh, 1986). This meta-theoretical
point of view is emphasized in particular in the so-called "second order
cybernetics" (von Foerster, 1979; 1981), which studies how observers
construct models.

Let us proceed with the differences between cybernetics and
mathematics. Mathematics is characterized by the following assumptions:
simplicity, regularity and invariance; the separability of systems into
independent elements; and the objective, context-independent, value-free
character of knowledge. Cybernetics, on the other hand, emphasizes complexity,
variety and process; the fact that elements always interact; and the
subjective, context- and value-dependent nature of knowledge.
Cybernetics does not deny the value of mathematics; it assumes it but goes
beyond it, by trying to encompass phenomena which cannot be represented in a
static, unambiguous, formal framework.

OK. So now that we have an understanding of what "meta" means, and we've
had an introduction to cybernetics, we can ask about the fundamental
principles on which the PCP philosophy is based.
What are the basic concepts and assumptions?

Joslyn:

Our most important concepts, are, alas, not very fundamental. The central
idea is that of the Meta-System Transition (MST), the process whereby new
levels of nature emerge through the construction of new levels of control
over lower-level subsystems. This is a very complicated idea, however; so
as MST Theory is dedicated to a view of systems and nature as an evolving
hierarchy of control systems, so much of our work has been devoted to
"unpacking" these somewhat simpler, but just as important, concepts of
"evolution" and "control" in terms of even simpler ideas.

Below "control" we have a cluster of fundamental concepts which shift in
relation to each other depending on which of us you're talking to and what
we're thinking at the time, but which we more or less always circle around
(see
wfissue.html referencing my paper "Semantic Control Systems" in a
special issue of the journal World Futures on MSTT which we edited).
Perhaps the most important are the dual concepts of freedom and
constraint, which have many synonyms: variety and selection,
choices and determinism.

Similarly, below "evolution" we have a similar cluster of concepts
surrounding "action" and the nature of and kinds of change: equilibration,
adaptation, etc. Here also are important concepts surrounding "will" and
the nature of ethical action.

You claim that you're sort of "applying the theory to itself" by allowing the
Website to grow as people come in and add new stuff. The "selection"
of new text-material is the motor of this process. How does this selection
take place? Who decides? On what criteria? How "open" is your view?
It has to be open if it wants to be able to evolve, I suppose.

Joslyn:

This has been a central concern since the beginning of the project. The
three editors have developed a great deal of common thought, but of course
that can (and should) only be very partial. We also work with many
colleagues whose interaction we value very much. But we were also
definitely reacting to what we perceived as a lack of consensus in our
academic field, the lack of a solid theoretical foundation.

So here self-application of cybernetic principles means first avoiding both
the extreme constraint of censorship and the extreme variety of anarchy.
And moreover, self-application means using cybernetic systems to solve the
problem, that is, allowing the new forms of computer-based knowledge
systems to flexibly represent everything from individual to grand
consensual opinion simultaneously.

Our first idea was separate nodes for consensus statements, disagreement,
and individual discussions. Later we saw that this could be generalized
within a highly multidimensional document to allow any level of
"collaborative granularity", where communities of differeing sizes could
form regions of agreement and disagreement of whatever complexity they
could tolerate. In general, the size of the consensual granule and the
specificity of its statement are inversely related: the more vague the
statement, the easier it is to get everyone to agree.

Actually implementing these ideas has been harder than simply expressing
them. We are actively developing mechanisms for such participation and
structuring of collaborative work. Watch this space!

We will. In the meantime, are you receiving any support or criticism from
the general public?

Turchin:

Both. Different parts of the project draw different responses.
The most difficult part is about the future. A superficial reader
easily misunderstands our views and gets outraged, calling
them anti-Western and totalitarian.

Well, meaby your ideas are quite new. Personally, I think the world
isn't quite ready for this kind of big changes in mentality and ways of
thinking. Or are they?

Joslyn:

We have had a slow, steady interest from the world at large. Obviously,
most of our community are from the academy, but I'm constantly surprised at
the breadth of backgrounds and the number of countries that we now
represent. Most respondents are very positive; a few are skeptical; and a
very few are critical. In one famous incident early in the project's
history, we were accused of being Stalinists! The idea of the world as a
large, hierarchical control system is decidedly out of fashion these days.
On first consideration, I can see how someone could make that mistake. The
amount of rehabilitation that these ideas require reflects the distance we
need to go to get our ideas accepted.

Turchin:

New paradigms and philosophies are always developed
by small groups (or even individuals) initially. They are accepted only
when (and if) it becomes necessary, as in a time of crisis.
Or near crisis. The more radical is the change of the paradigm, the longer
it waits to be accepted.

During the Christmas Holidays, I finally found some time to read
Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance, a book of which I didn't
know it was such a classic. It really made an impression on me,
because it puts the entire body of western thinking and science into
a different perspective. I get the feeling that projects such as the
PCP are sort of doing the same thing, but from another angle.

What do you think of the future of Western thinking?

Turchin:

The history of Western thinking is a history of critical analysis
and self-knowledge. I think this will go on. In the ethical dimension,
Western thought has been destructive of traditional non-critical
solutions. This lies at the root of our current social problems of ethics
and human values. It is of vital importance to find a logical place
of constructive -- not destructive -- ethics in the frame
of critical science-based thinking. One important (maybe the most important)
part of PCP is an attempt to grope for a solution of the problem of ethics.
Hence my concept of `the will for immortality' in its various forms.

And what about the future of the entire world? Are you optimistic or
pessimistic? Was the Club of Rome right?

Joslyn:

There are only two serious objections that I've every heard of the Club's
basic Malthusian analysis. The first is technological escapism:
since all prior forecasts of doom were foiled by the capacity of
technological advance to increase carrying capacity, therefore future
predictions of doom are invalid. This objection is dubious on its face for a
variety of reasons, not just the lack of necessity for history to repeat
itself, but also that it's a rate-chasing-rate problem: we can already see
that exponential population growth will catch up to the necessarily
non-exponential technological growth -- in the long run. But, as an
economist once said, in the long run we'll all be dead.

The other objection is of the possibility of a victory of rationality: that
people will in fact control their populations. This would, indeed, be an
MST on an enormous scale: where previously populations were freely at the
mercy of the ecological-economic environment (as enabled by their
technological capabilities), these would become constrained through the
growth of a higher level of control. And I'm not talking necessarily about
any Huxlien totalitarian dystopia: MST Theory sees control as much as a
bottom-up process where free actors increase their freedom by integration
in a whole as of a top-down process with control imposed from above. And
indeed, the evidence of fertility dropping with wealth points exactly in
that direction. But any "soft landing" for human populations could only
come to a vastly impoverished (per capita average) world of the mid-21st
century.